Single Light, Birch Tree, Night
W.T. Patterson
The small things gave it away. A familiar argument, the same go-to meal, seasonal patterns of joy and depression. Mary and I had another of our weekly fallouts. I worked too much, she felt alone, we needed a vacation. After making the same empty promises and apologies, she took to the couch to watch her favorite show for the thousandth time, her way of being comforted by “friends.” I stood on our quiet deck with a fresh coffee to stimulate the nerves for my second all-nighter in a week. Out back, I stared at the single white birch standing centered under the floodlights of the back garage. Around it, tall pines and evergreens blended into the background landscape of pseudo-suburbia at the property’s edge. A chosen tree, it seemed. Chipped bark respawned, branches seldom snapped, and the shape remained constant while the pines around it bent, died, and sometimes disappeared.
My work in quantum physics had led to discoveries both fascinating and terrifying about parallel universes and simulation theory. It’s a lonely world, what I do, because it can’t be explained over a dinner with friends, or a beer with the boys. It’s involved, an investment of time and mind-power attempting to unpack the impossible. What are the building blocks of matter and energy at the most fundamental level? Most people would rather talk about the game and go about their day living the way they always had. You work too much, Mary would say. We need a vacation.
That was my second clue.
Mary’s argument wasn’t just about my work. She knew that I’d hired on an associate, Jana Baronowski - a refugee from war-torn Europe, a brilliant mind for equations, and perfect brown hair that never tangled or messed – as my collaborator. My mistake was describing her to Mary as having dazzling blue eyes, five years younger, and athletic. A tennis enthusiast outside of the lab, she had tapped into a greater consciousness that comes from either true genius, or unimaginable trauma.
If you asked me now the color of Mary’s eyes, I would not say piercing. Perhaps a dull sand, or attic dust. Genetics are a funny thing that way. Some people get all the gifts, and some get none.
I sipped my coffee and looked at the birch. The heat of the drink made my tongue recoil with a familiar sting, the bitter taste like a radio pop-song. Always there, but somehow in the background, a tree in a forest of trees, pine growing between spruce and fir. There is an unmistakable connection between all things including the bland.
“Are you familiar with the Mother Tree theory?” Jana Baronowski asked. She set her lunch down across from me at the research station, hands free of marker ink despite having spent hours at the board, nails perfectly trimmed. We sat in a cubed room surrounded by whiteboards and glass.
“Do tell,” I said. My hands, too, were clean of ink though I hadn’t washed them.
“In a forest, there is a single tree, a Mother Tree, and she communicates to the rest of the forest through a vast series of underground fungus. She tells young saplings how to survive, how the other trees can make room, and how to best reach the sunlight.”
“She is their God,” I said.
“It is why many new forests fail. There is no Mother Tree to teach them how to grow. Knowledge is acquired by surviving, and surviving means learning to break perspective. Imagine,” she said, and stood. She uncapped a marker and drew a square on the whiteboard. “A school where children are only taught by other children. Math becomes not-math, books go unread, and the fabric of our knowledge unravels.”
She drew another square and connected the corners with diagonal lines to make the image appear three dimensional. In the center, she drew a happy face. Beneath the cube, she wrote they are happy because I chose them to be happy.
“You are fascinating,” I said.
“That is by design,” she said, and recapped her marker.
From outside on my porch, the cool night air crisp and still, I turned to witness Mary on the couch watching her favorite show. The characters recited their lines, manufactured moments created controllable mayhem, and they existed the way they were built to exist.
Mary, too.
Until that night, my life had felt like a series of quests. Join a soccer team, score a goal. Go to school, ace the math test. Find John, get the key to the projection room, make out with Katie Umbridge during seventh period social studies.
Eventually, those quests became larger. Go to college, do a semester abroad. Graduate with honors, land a well-paying job. Move to a new town, make friends with the neighbors. Travel to Sweden, attend Bjorn Solveig’s lecture on String Theory.
One ends, another begins. The opportunities presented themselves and, with my small wisdom, I followed each until a second set of quests emerged to rival the prominent ones. This new batch was more internal.
Find a nice partner, settle down. Buy a house, raise children.
Enter Mary. We met at an inevitable celebration, one of those neighborhood gatherings that everyone seemed to attend, a barbecue with music, food, and drink. I don’t remember who threw the party, what the specific occasion, what she wore, nor the circumstances of our meeting, just that we met.
Even then, she asked, “Wouldn’t you rather talk to the woman in red?” She nodded toward a busty woman in a fire-truck red sundress that glowed under the setting summer sun. I thought her self-dismissal cute and playful, that Mary just wanted to feel wanted, so I declined the woman in red and spent the party with Mary.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“Here,” she said. “Wouldn’t you rather talk to the woman in red?”
“Does it matter? Does anything matter? That’s my business, you know: matter. I’m a quantum physicist. I explore the foundations of matter and energy. Where do we come from at an elemental level? What are we comprised of?” I asked.
“You work too much,” Mary said, and then she smiled. I felt seen and understood because it was true, I did work too much. I needed a vacation.
Though we spoke in the quiet corner of that party, the universe, it seemed, tried to pull me away toward other corners to interact with other people. When the host came to say hello, I imagined myself as a player in a movie during a montage, the camera above us cutting between shots of people laughing, eating, drinking, and dancing. Even during those quick bursts, I imagined myself being full frame while Mary stood blurred in the background. Still, I took this as a sign that the night was of greater importance than I could see.
“What do you dream of?” I asked Mary. She held a red Solo cup and took a slow sip. She didn’t answer and in her eyes, I interpreted a deep sadness and longing, a dark shadow across her soul that bound her to a place and time inescapable to the physical vessel living in her shoes. It made sense, and worse – I understood. Maybe there was truth to predestination, to fate, to God.
Or maybe I had played too many video games and defaulted to the thought of people in terms of avatars and NPCs.
Later that night, I walked Mary home. No one else was out except for a woman in a tracksuit powerwalking on the opposite sidewalk. The houses stretched along the manicured street and the season was still new enough that the bugs hadn’t hatched.
Come to think of it, I can’t remember the last time I encountered bugs. Or, come to think of it, tasted orange juice. Summer strolls do that to a person, they make us question the past by acknowledging what the present lacks.
Mary moved softly, arms by her side, shoulders keeping pace with her steps. Around us, the soundtrack of night played on an infinite loop. Crickets, tree peepers, a distant dog. She stopped in front of a bungalow and turned so that her entire body faced me. Time stood still, the code of the universe firing Booleans and binary at the essence of our being. Connection. Disconnection. Here. Gone. Alive. Dead.
“You need a vacation,” she said, and I swore she saw the real me, the hidden me that I rarely exposed to the outside world out of fear that my façade might shatter. A quantum physicist knows no other life than their work.
We didn’t kiss that night, but Mary hinted that she’d be at her house should I decide to return. When I did the following day, she was.
I made up with Mary and started my all-nighter later than intended. She listened to my apology, nodded with stoic poise, and went to bed after showing me a new Live, Laugh, Love throw pillow she’d found online.
“Get it,” I said, and she clicked buy.
I cleaned up our dinner settings by tossing the scraps of food out into the backyard. Another night of store-bought Caesar salads, microwave-ready breadsticks, and spaghetti. For wine: bottom-shelf cabernet sauvignon. My life hadn’t exactly leveled up, but rather leveled out. I kept the door open to bask in the gentle night breeze.
Jana Baronowski pinged me the moment I signed on.
New Developments, she said. The golden ratio exists on a molecular level as well. She linked me to a new study from Bjorn Solveig’s laboratory in Sweden. The same measurements that existed inside spirals, how our height is the same length as our wingspan finger to finger, how our feet are the exact size of our forearms had been uncovered in the primordial makeup of our existence.
Hardcoded into life itself, I replied.
Strange, no? Jana Barnowski wrote. We come from the same equations, but there still exists deviation. How can some of us become warlords, and others poets if we are all made of the same stuff?
What did you have for dinner? I asked.
Duck Fois Gras with rice and red beans, Jana Barownowsi typed. Vintage Malbec to cleanse the palate. You?
Guess, I wrote, and imagined the massive eyeroll coming from the other end of the computer. A repeating pattern.
Something about her answer though, the specificity of her tastes – it hinted at something deeper than I was willing to let myself admit.
Meet me downtown, I typed, and then quietly rose from the desk to check on Mary. She slept soundly on her side of the bed.
Shall I wear my red dress? ;-) Jana sent via text. I left through the front.
The night was still, a familiar soundtrack playing on an endless loop again. Hardly any wind. Hardly any bugs. I walked a few blocks and hopped on a bus toward downtown. At this time of night, I had a guess as to who I’d see populate the seats. A drunk passed out in the back, his dirty coat doing little to hide a stained sweatshirt or the crumpled paper bag beneath, a woman in a blue server outfit from the diner on Clifton and Pearle either going to or coming from, and a driver in uniform wearing sunglasses, even though it was night.
“Do you have the time?” I asked. I didn’t need the time, but a new theory was brewing, one that coded people into three distinct responses.
“Next stop, 4th and Wilde,” the man said; a straight shot to downtown. I’d only ever taken the bus to that exact stop.
I turned to the woman.
“Is this seat taken?” I asked and pointed next to her.
“No hablo ingles,” she said, and ducked her head.
“Soy el maestro de tu dominio,” I said.
“Lo siento,” the woman said. “No hablo ingles.”
The man in the back, on cue, asked for spare change before coughing and looking out the window.
The bus pulled to a stop, and I hopped off through the middle exit. Jana Baronowski stood at the corner in leather pants and an 80’s metal-band cut-off tee shirt. The font was big, pointy, and filled with a faded yellow. Her hair was up and clipped with neon blue and pink barrettes styled to something from the same period. She stood out, and people moved around her. They walked and came close, but never collided, swirling molecules in an expansive universe avoiding another big bang.
“I dig your digs,” I said.
“On sale,” she smirked. “$4.99. New skin, new me.”
“Look around,” I said. People in business suits moved alongside a rogue skateboarder. A bike messenger with a helmet zoomed past. A yellow taxi idled on the corner. Jana Baronowski refused to look away from me.
“Odd, no?” she asked. “Self-awareness in such a world?”
“None of these people here have any greater purpose than to pass us right now, to populate this stretch of street at this time of night.” I walked up to a man in a business suit, his hair slicked back, and shoved him in the chest.
Hey man, watch it! he said. I pushed him again. And then shoved another man. Then another passerby.
Cool it, bro.
How rude!
Take my money!
I’m callin’ the cops on you, punk.
But the moment I took a step back, they each resumed their steady paced-walk toward another street, toward their destination, toward somewhere.
Jana Baronowski nodded, coming to similar conclusions.
“We can leave together,” she said, and held out her hand like a new quest presenting itself.
After months of teetering, threats of lawsuits, and the near miss of a full-blown trial, Bjorn Solvieg now owns Sentient.
On Thursday night, Mr. Solveig closed his $44 billion deal to buy the technology platform, said three people with knowledge of the situation. He also began cleaning house by firing the top brass executives — including the chief executive and chief financial officer — on Thursday. Mr. Solveig had arrived at Sentient’s San Francisco headquarters on Wednesday and met with engineers and executives to debug the simulators.
The closing of the deal, which followed months of drama after the Umbridge scandal that later resulted in suicide, Mr. Solveig briefly considered withdrawing the offer completely. Solveig, a self-described “Experience Absolutist,” has said that he wants to make the immersion platform a more freewheeling place for any willing to pay.
Mr. Solveig’s open approach to experiences on Sentient could exacerbate long simmering issues of toxic content and misinformation, affecting memory recall around the world leading users to “awaken.” Early tests will come within days, when Brazil legalizes memory-block implants for trauma survivors. Sentient said it would prohibit actualization of users and has promised to debug a system notorious for bots and malware.
Bjorn Solveig, 51, will be remaking Sentient without having to disclose how it is performing to stockholders. By taking the company private, he does not need to regularly answer to shareholders and can make changes to the service away from the public’s prying eyes.
Completing the deal was a victory for Sentient’s board. When Mr. Solveig offered to pay $35.90 per share in April, Sentient faced criticism for accepting a price that was too low. But, as the global economy faltered in the ensuing months and Sentient’s stock fell, the deal price appeared to be a win for shareholders, and the board sought to force Mr. Solveig to abide by the agreement.
At least one of the executives who was fired was seen “plugging in” to the existing platform through a vascular prototype not yet available to the public.
I got home, Jana Barnowski behind, and found Mary still asleep in the bed. The back door was still wide open, a gentle breeze still pushing through.
“Mary!” I shouted. “Wake up! Why are there no bugs on the food outside?!” I pointed to the open door and the place where pieces of food should have been.
“I’m lonely,” Mary said. She looked at Jana Baronowski, then looked back at me.
“Why do I have the memory of bugs, but cannot remember a time when I encountered them?” I asked. “Why do we have the same meals, the same arguments, the same apologies?”
I knew why. Of course I did.
Mary did not know why. She was not programmed to know why.
But Jana Baronowski was like me. She understood.
“You work too much,” Mary said. It made my skin hot, and so I stormed into the backyard and looked at the single birch tree among the forest of evergreens. The one shining beacon catching the spotlight, different enough but different still.
Behind the garage was an axe I used to split wood. I don’t know where it came from, only that it had always been there.
Sometimes, I can’t remember my childhood.
I picked up the axe and walked to the birch. I clutched and swung with everything I had at the base of the tree. Wood splintered outward before losing itself to shadow.
My mind remembers the taste of orange juice.
I swung again. Thwack. The collision rippled up my arms and into my back.
“We need a vacation,” Mary said. She was in the doorway of our bungalow. Jana Baronowski lit a cigarette and held it to her lips.
“What she said,” Jana laughed, and watched.
The night sounds repeated on an infinite loop. The warm breeze moved around us. The stars shone brighter than they should have.
My mother never warned me of a world like this. She died of lung cancer when I was a boy in 1987.
The tree shook and the base snapped. I dropped the axe. The blade landed without a sound as we watched as the birch fall backward into the woods.
“You work too much,” Mary said, and I understood why I was so drawn to her. She offered no surprises, and no surprises meant minimal pain. It also meant sacrificing my ability and intelligence in lieu of peace.
I, like the tree, chose to stand amongst my peers even though I was different, playable, that my programming was complex. Mary, my sweet and plain NPC, was not.
The tree crashed down, swallowed by evergreen and pines, losing itself to the dark reality of a world built for those who could afford to enjoy it.
W.T. Patterson
The small things gave it away. A familiar argument, the same go-to meal, seasonal patterns of joy and depression. Mary and I had another of our weekly fallouts. I worked too much, she felt alone, we needed a vacation. After making the same empty promises and apologies, she took to the couch to watch her favorite show for the thousandth time, her way of being comforted by “friends.” I stood on our quiet deck with a fresh coffee to stimulate the nerves for my second all-nighter in a week. Out back, I stared at the single white birch standing centered under the floodlights of the back garage. Around it, tall pines and evergreens blended into the background landscape of pseudo-suburbia at the property’s edge. A chosen tree, it seemed. Chipped bark respawned, branches seldom snapped, and the shape remained constant while the pines around it bent, died, and sometimes disappeared.
My work in quantum physics had led to discoveries both fascinating and terrifying about parallel universes and simulation theory. It’s a lonely world, what I do, because it can’t be explained over a dinner with friends, or a beer with the boys. It’s involved, an investment of time and mind-power attempting to unpack the impossible. What are the building blocks of matter and energy at the most fundamental level? Most people would rather talk about the game and go about their day living the way they always had. You work too much, Mary would say. We need a vacation.
That was my second clue.
Mary’s argument wasn’t just about my work. She knew that I’d hired on an associate, Jana Baronowski - a refugee from war-torn Europe, a brilliant mind for equations, and perfect brown hair that never tangled or messed – as my collaborator. My mistake was describing her to Mary as having dazzling blue eyes, five years younger, and athletic. A tennis enthusiast outside of the lab, she had tapped into a greater consciousness that comes from either true genius, or unimaginable trauma.
If you asked me now the color of Mary’s eyes, I would not say piercing. Perhaps a dull sand, or attic dust. Genetics are a funny thing that way. Some people get all the gifts, and some get none.
I sipped my coffee and looked at the birch. The heat of the drink made my tongue recoil with a familiar sting, the bitter taste like a radio pop-song. Always there, but somehow in the background, a tree in a forest of trees, pine growing between spruce and fir. There is an unmistakable connection between all things including the bland.
“Are you familiar with the Mother Tree theory?” Jana Baronowski asked. She set her lunch down across from me at the research station, hands free of marker ink despite having spent hours at the board, nails perfectly trimmed. We sat in a cubed room surrounded by whiteboards and glass.
“Do tell,” I said. My hands, too, were clean of ink though I hadn’t washed them.
“In a forest, there is a single tree, a Mother Tree, and she communicates to the rest of the forest through a vast series of underground fungus. She tells young saplings how to survive, how the other trees can make room, and how to best reach the sunlight.”
“She is their God,” I said.
“It is why many new forests fail. There is no Mother Tree to teach them how to grow. Knowledge is acquired by surviving, and surviving means learning to break perspective. Imagine,” she said, and stood. She uncapped a marker and drew a square on the whiteboard. “A school where children are only taught by other children. Math becomes not-math, books go unread, and the fabric of our knowledge unravels.”
She drew another square and connected the corners with diagonal lines to make the image appear three dimensional. In the center, she drew a happy face. Beneath the cube, she wrote they are happy because I chose them to be happy.
“You are fascinating,” I said.
“That is by design,” she said, and recapped her marker.
From outside on my porch, the cool night air crisp and still, I turned to witness Mary on the couch watching her favorite show. The characters recited their lines, manufactured moments created controllable mayhem, and they existed the way they were built to exist.
Mary, too.
Until that night, my life had felt like a series of quests. Join a soccer team, score a goal. Go to school, ace the math test. Find John, get the key to the projection room, make out with Katie Umbridge during seventh period social studies.
Eventually, those quests became larger. Go to college, do a semester abroad. Graduate with honors, land a well-paying job. Move to a new town, make friends with the neighbors. Travel to Sweden, attend Bjorn Solveig’s lecture on String Theory.
One ends, another begins. The opportunities presented themselves and, with my small wisdom, I followed each until a second set of quests emerged to rival the prominent ones. This new batch was more internal.
Find a nice partner, settle down. Buy a house, raise children.
Enter Mary. We met at an inevitable celebration, one of those neighborhood gatherings that everyone seemed to attend, a barbecue with music, food, and drink. I don’t remember who threw the party, what the specific occasion, what she wore, nor the circumstances of our meeting, just that we met.
Even then, she asked, “Wouldn’t you rather talk to the woman in red?” She nodded toward a busty woman in a fire-truck red sundress that glowed under the setting summer sun. I thought her self-dismissal cute and playful, that Mary just wanted to feel wanted, so I declined the woman in red and spent the party with Mary.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“Here,” she said. “Wouldn’t you rather talk to the woman in red?”
“Does it matter? Does anything matter? That’s my business, you know: matter. I’m a quantum physicist. I explore the foundations of matter and energy. Where do we come from at an elemental level? What are we comprised of?” I asked.
“You work too much,” Mary said, and then she smiled. I felt seen and understood because it was true, I did work too much. I needed a vacation.
Though we spoke in the quiet corner of that party, the universe, it seemed, tried to pull me away toward other corners to interact with other people. When the host came to say hello, I imagined myself as a player in a movie during a montage, the camera above us cutting between shots of people laughing, eating, drinking, and dancing. Even during those quick bursts, I imagined myself being full frame while Mary stood blurred in the background. Still, I took this as a sign that the night was of greater importance than I could see.
“What do you dream of?” I asked Mary. She held a red Solo cup and took a slow sip. She didn’t answer and in her eyes, I interpreted a deep sadness and longing, a dark shadow across her soul that bound her to a place and time inescapable to the physical vessel living in her shoes. It made sense, and worse – I understood. Maybe there was truth to predestination, to fate, to God.
Or maybe I had played too many video games and defaulted to the thought of people in terms of avatars and NPCs.
Later that night, I walked Mary home. No one else was out except for a woman in a tracksuit powerwalking on the opposite sidewalk. The houses stretched along the manicured street and the season was still new enough that the bugs hadn’t hatched.
Come to think of it, I can’t remember the last time I encountered bugs. Or, come to think of it, tasted orange juice. Summer strolls do that to a person, they make us question the past by acknowledging what the present lacks.
Mary moved softly, arms by her side, shoulders keeping pace with her steps. Around us, the soundtrack of night played on an infinite loop. Crickets, tree peepers, a distant dog. She stopped in front of a bungalow and turned so that her entire body faced me. Time stood still, the code of the universe firing Booleans and binary at the essence of our being. Connection. Disconnection. Here. Gone. Alive. Dead.
“You need a vacation,” she said, and I swore she saw the real me, the hidden me that I rarely exposed to the outside world out of fear that my façade might shatter. A quantum physicist knows no other life than their work.
We didn’t kiss that night, but Mary hinted that she’d be at her house should I decide to return. When I did the following day, she was.
I made up with Mary and started my all-nighter later than intended. She listened to my apology, nodded with stoic poise, and went to bed after showing me a new Live, Laugh, Love throw pillow she’d found online.
“Get it,” I said, and she clicked buy.
I cleaned up our dinner settings by tossing the scraps of food out into the backyard. Another night of store-bought Caesar salads, microwave-ready breadsticks, and spaghetti. For wine: bottom-shelf cabernet sauvignon. My life hadn’t exactly leveled up, but rather leveled out. I kept the door open to bask in the gentle night breeze.
Jana Baronowski pinged me the moment I signed on.
New Developments, she said. The golden ratio exists on a molecular level as well. She linked me to a new study from Bjorn Solveig’s laboratory in Sweden. The same measurements that existed inside spirals, how our height is the same length as our wingspan finger to finger, how our feet are the exact size of our forearms had been uncovered in the primordial makeup of our existence.
Hardcoded into life itself, I replied.
Strange, no? Jana Barnowski wrote. We come from the same equations, but there still exists deviation. How can some of us become warlords, and others poets if we are all made of the same stuff?
What did you have for dinner? I asked.
Duck Fois Gras with rice and red beans, Jana Barownowsi typed. Vintage Malbec to cleanse the palate. You?
Guess, I wrote, and imagined the massive eyeroll coming from the other end of the computer. A repeating pattern.
Something about her answer though, the specificity of her tastes – it hinted at something deeper than I was willing to let myself admit.
Meet me downtown, I typed, and then quietly rose from the desk to check on Mary. She slept soundly on her side of the bed.
Shall I wear my red dress? ;-) Jana sent via text. I left through the front.
The night was still, a familiar soundtrack playing on an endless loop again. Hardly any wind. Hardly any bugs. I walked a few blocks and hopped on a bus toward downtown. At this time of night, I had a guess as to who I’d see populate the seats. A drunk passed out in the back, his dirty coat doing little to hide a stained sweatshirt or the crumpled paper bag beneath, a woman in a blue server outfit from the diner on Clifton and Pearle either going to or coming from, and a driver in uniform wearing sunglasses, even though it was night.
“Do you have the time?” I asked. I didn’t need the time, but a new theory was brewing, one that coded people into three distinct responses.
“Next stop, 4th and Wilde,” the man said; a straight shot to downtown. I’d only ever taken the bus to that exact stop.
I turned to the woman.
“Is this seat taken?” I asked and pointed next to her.
“No hablo ingles,” she said, and ducked her head.
“Soy el maestro de tu dominio,” I said.
“Lo siento,” the woman said. “No hablo ingles.”
The man in the back, on cue, asked for spare change before coughing and looking out the window.
The bus pulled to a stop, and I hopped off through the middle exit. Jana Baronowski stood at the corner in leather pants and an 80’s metal-band cut-off tee shirt. The font was big, pointy, and filled with a faded yellow. Her hair was up and clipped with neon blue and pink barrettes styled to something from the same period. She stood out, and people moved around her. They walked and came close, but never collided, swirling molecules in an expansive universe avoiding another big bang.
“I dig your digs,” I said.
“On sale,” she smirked. “$4.99. New skin, new me.”
“Look around,” I said. People in business suits moved alongside a rogue skateboarder. A bike messenger with a helmet zoomed past. A yellow taxi idled on the corner. Jana Baronowski refused to look away from me.
“Odd, no?” she asked. “Self-awareness in such a world?”
“None of these people here have any greater purpose than to pass us right now, to populate this stretch of street at this time of night.” I walked up to a man in a business suit, his hair slicked back, and shoved him in the chest.
Hey man, watch it! he said. I pushed him again. And then shoved another man. Then another passerby.
Cool it, bro.
How rude!
Take my money!
I’m callin’ the cops on you, punk.
But the moment I took a step back, they each resumed their steady paced-walk toward another street, toward their destination, toward somewhere.
Jana Baronowski nodded, coming to similar conclusions.
“We can leave together,” she said, and held out her hand like a new quest presenting itself.
After months of teetering, threats of lawsuits, and the near miss of a full-blown trial, Bjorn Solvieg now owns Sentient.
On Thursday night, Mr. Solveig closed his $44 billion deal to buy the technology platform, said three people with knowledge of the situation. He also began cleaning house by firing the top brass executives — including the chief executive and chief financial officer — on Thursday. Mr. Solveig had arrived at Sentient’s San Francisco headquarters on Wednesday and met with engineers and executives to debug the simulators.
The closing of the deal, which followed months of drama after the Umbridge scandal that later resulted in suicide, Mr. Solveig briefly considered withdrawing the offer completely. Solveig, a self-described “Experience Absolutist,” has said that he wants to make the immersion platform a more freewheeling place for any willing to pay.
Mr. Solveig’s open approach to experiences on Sentient could exacerbate long simmering issues of toxic content and misinformation, affecting memory recall around the world leading users to “awaken.” Early tests will come within days, when Brazil legalizes memory-block implants for trauma survivors. Sentient said it would prohibit actualization of users and has promised to debug a system notorious for bots and malware.
Bjorn Solveig, 51, will be remaking Sentient without having to disclose how it is performing to stockholders. By taking the company private, he does not need to regularly answer to shareholders and can make changes to the service away from the public’s prying eyes.
Completing the deal was a victory for Sentient’s board. When Mr. Solveig offered to pay $35.90 per share in April, Sentient faced criticism for accepting a price that was too low. But, as the global economy faltered in the ensuing months and Sentient’s stock fell, the deal price appeared to be a win for shareholders, and the board sought to force Mr. Solveig to abide by the agreement.
At least one of the executives who was fired was seen “plugging in” to the existing platform through a vascular prototype not yet available to the public.
I got home, Jana Barnowski behind, and found Mary still asleep in the bed. The back door was still wide open, a gentle breeze still pushing through.
“Mary!” I shouted. “Wake up! Why are there no bugs on the food outside?!” I pointed to the open door and the place where pieces of food should have been.
“I’m lonely,” Mary said. She looked at Jana Baronowski, then looked back at me.
“Why do I have the memory of bugs, but cannot remember a time when I encountered them?” I asked. “Why do we have the same meals, the same arguments, the same apologies?”
I knew why. Of course I did.
Mary did not know why. She was not programmed to know why.
But Jana Baronowski was like me. She understood.
“You work too much,” Mary said. It made my skin hot, and so I stormed into the backyard and looked at the single birch tree among the forest of evergreens. The one shining beacon catching the spotlight, different enough but different still.
Behind the garage was an axe I used to split wood. I don’t know where it came from, only that it had always been there.
Sometimes, I can’t remember my childhood.
I picked up the axe and walked to the birch. I clutched and swung with everything I had at the base of the tree. Wood splintered outward before losing itself to shadow.
My mind remembers the taste of orange juice.
I swung again. Thwack. The collision rippled up my arms and into my back.
“We need a vacation,” Mary said. She was in the doorway of our bungalow. Jana Baronowski lit a cigarette and held it to her lips.
“What she said,” Jana laughed, and watched.
The night sounds repeated on an infinite loop. The warm breeze moved around us. The stars shone brighter than they should have.
My mother never warned me of a world like this. She died of lung cancer when I was a boy in 1987.
The tree shook and the base snapped. I dropped the axe. The blade landed without a sound as we watched as the birch fall backward into the woods.
“You work too much,” Mary said, and I understood why I was so drawn to her. She offered no surprises, and no surprises meant minimal pain. It also meant sacrificing my ability and intelligence in lieu of peace.
I, like the tree, chose to stand amongst my peers even though I was different, playable, that my programming was complex. Mary, my sweet and plain NPC, was not.
The tree crashed down, swallowed by evergreen and pines, losing itself to the dark reality of a world built for those who could afford to enjoy it.
